Predator314's Poker Journal

October goals:

1.) STAY OFF TILT!
2.) Play 20,000 hands at minimum
3.) Re-establish my bankroll back to it's normal capacity
4.) Win that Pokerstars blogger tournament.

Easy enough. September was a pretty shitty month. I hate to see summer end and fall/winter time come. However, I'm sure glad to see this September end. It's been trying to say the least.

I almost took the night off last night. I did play in a sit n go on Empire. It was a $20/2. I figured I'd give it a whirl while waiting on some downloads to finish. I ended up getting 2nd in the thing. The key hand heads up was my AQ losing to his pocket 4's. We got it all in pre-flop. After that, I was so shortstacked, I couldn't do much.

I'll get back into it tonight. I'm going to the high school football game to brave the cold (it's a tit bit nipply out there today). Then I plan on going to Wal-mart to pick up some supplies and dvds. Then I'm going home to play a bit of poker.

On another note, as you can see, I'm signed up for the blogger tournament on Pokerstars. They are giving away a Caribbean WPT seat which would be super nice. I wouldn't mind winning that sucker and taking a nice vacation. They are also giving away some other nice prizes. All of which I would like to have. These prizes include 5 24" LCD Monitors from Dell, 10 Xbox 360s, 20 iPod Nano's. Count me in! Any of these would make a nice addition to my home too. Especially an Xbox 360 or one of those 24" monitors. Look for Predator314 during that tournament. I'll either be the guy raising your big blind late in the tournament or the guy that went out on the first hand.

Yep!

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 9259986

You know how you read about all the things that go wrong in poker? 2 outters on the river, AJ beating your AK, aces getting cracked by 5-8 offsuit, etc. Well, I've had all of those things happen to me.... TODAY! It's getting insane. My bankroll is really hurting right now. I've been getting my ass handed to me this past week. I pulled up Poker Tracker and filtered out to where only my wired pairs were showing. Take all my wired pairs and they are LOSING me money! This includes pocket Aces which are winning below 50% and costing me money. I'm not talking being dealt one time. I'm talking 14 times.

Enough of the rant. I'm taking a break for a couple days.

Poker is wearing me out lately. It seems like every time I turn around, I'm in the middle of a downswing. My buddy list has grown astronomically lately with all the retards I've found at my tables. Table selection is not a problem. Beating these fucks is a problem.

Here's an example:

Party Poker 3/6 Hold'em (6 max, 6 handed) converter


Preflop: Hero is UTG with Ah, As.

Hero raises, MP calls, 3 folds, BB calls.


Flop: (6.33 SB) Qd, 2h, Jd (3 players)

BB checks, Hero bets, MP calls, BB folds.


Turn: (4.16 BB) 2d (2 players)

Hero bets, MP raises, Hero calls.


River: (8.16 BB) Kh (2 players)

Hero checks, MP bets, Hero calls.


Final Pot: 10.16 BB


Results in white below:

Hero has Ah As (two pair, aces and twos).

MP has 5d 4d (flush, queen high).

Outcome: MP wins 10.16 BB.

This retard owned me over and over, then proceeded to dump off all my money to the others at the table. Meanwhile, I stand by helpless as I get dealt 62 offsuit 100 times in a row.

All is not bad, looking back so far this month, I've somehow grinded a $500 profit. Add another $700 of rakeback and I'm looking decent for the month. It's not quite enough to cover all my expenses, but it's close. My poker profits will cover my loan payment, electricity, water, cable, and insurance. That just really leaves my truck which I'll pay out of my regular paycheck.

I can't wait to start playign the $3/6 6 max full time. The players at this game are horrid. So are the suckouts though. I have to be convservative with the bankroll if I'm going to use it to pay bills. So I'll hold off until I have about 500 or 600 BBs for that game. Maybe next month.

I'm also so damn due for a rush, it's unbelievable. I've had some decent days and some mediocre days, but still have yet to have that day where the deck smacks me in the side of the head. Back in the good old days, it seemed like I had one of those days a week. Maybe I'm just saving them up so that I have a whole month like that. Yeah right.

What do you know, another big downswing? These things are weekly occurrences. My bankroll is going nowhere. I'll spend 2 days blowing through my bankroll, the other 5 getting it back to par.

I played over 900 hands last night and won almost $11. That was a hoot. I played in a tournament and bubbled out. Another hoot.

My tournament game is coming around. I got deep in a $1000 guaranteed on Empire last night, but bubbled out when I made a wrong move. Big stack had been raising my big blind over and over and over. I finally get QJs and push when he did it. Of course, he had aces that time. I had enough stack to probably dribble into the money, but all the good money was at the final table. That's what I was aiming for.

I really need to work on my tourney game. I played a bunch of tournaments this weekend and only cashed in one. I realized, that I'm a horrible player in these tournaments. I can't make a decent laydown. Every tournament seems to have the same story: I chip up nicely in the beginning. I get about midway in the tournament and donk off ALL my chips in one hand.

So, I re-evaluated my game and played the $5000 guaranteed on Empire last night. I made some pretty good laydowns (I think). These types of folds I made, would never had been made prior to yesterday. I don't have the exact hands because I'm here at work, but there is one hand that really left a bad taste in my hand when I laid it down.

Anyway, I ended up cashing for a small amount, placing 19th out of 200+. I probably should have been deeper, but I took a couple bad beats including one hideous one where I called a short stack's all in with A10 and he had Q10. He ended up making a king high straight on the river to beat me. The final hand, I was in the big blind. A big stack limped from middle/late position. All folded to me. I pushed with AQ and he thought and finally called with 44. The cards brought me no help, and I lost the race.

I also played some $2/4 over the weekend too. I made a nice score Friday night and then a decent score on Saturday afternoon which pretty much broke me even with my tournament play that day. Then yesterday, I lost a bit on the $2/4 tables, while pretty much breaking even on my tournaments.

Which brings me to tonight. I think I'm gonna play some $2/4 up until around 9:00 when I will enter the $10,000 guaranteed on Empire.